“Dr Singh’s abiding legacy was his absolutely superb crisis management and his ability to get a wide variety of people, domain experts, global leaders, multilateral experts, and bureaucrats to actually do the work he wanted them to do without an inferiority complex,” Roy said.
Manmohan Singh, India’s 13th Prime Minister and the first Sikh to hold the office passed away on December 26 at the age of 92 at AIIMS, Delhi. Known for his intellectual brilliance and humble character, Singh leaves behind a rich legacy of economic reforms and transformative leadership.
Sudipto Mundle, Chairman of the Centre for Development Studies, said Singh’s pivotal role in the 1991 economic reforms, which transformed India’s economy, and opened it to global markets, setting the stage for decades of growth, is not celebrated enough.
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Mundle also remembered Singh as a professor at the Delhi School of Economics, where he taught international trade—a subject central to his PhD thesis from Oxford University.
“As a finance minister, as Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) Governor, and as Prime Minister, he played a very important role in different dimensions,” Mundle noted.
While Singh is widely recognised for his economic contributions, Mundle pointed out another significant achievement during his tenure as Prime Minister. “His big moment as Prime Minister was, of course, the nuclear agreement with the US government, which put India in a whole different place, and that has not been recognised as much as his role in the economic reforms of 1991,” Mundle added.
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